Former Vice President Dick Cheney lashed out at the Obama administration for its handling of Benghazi: 'I cannot understand why they weren't ready to go'

Former Vice President Dick Cheney criticized the Obama administration on Tuesday for its handling of the September 11, 2012 terror attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, calling it 'a failure of leadership.' Cheney said U.S. leaders should have been better prepared for violence on the anniversary of the al-Qaeda attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001.

'They should have been ready before anything ever happened,' Cheney told MailOnline exclusively during a party in Georgetown celebrating the launch of a new book by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

'I mean, it's North Africa - Libya, where they've already had major problems,' Cheney said. 'You know that al-Qaeda is operating there, and you have some of the other al-Qaeda-affiliated groups there like Ansar al-Sharia and others.'

Ansar al-Sharia, a militant terror group that aims to enforce Shariah law across Libya, was fingered almost immediately by U.S. intelligence as an organization that 'claimed credit' for the Benghazi attack, according to a 43-page interim report on the Benghazi fiasco issued by Republican leaders of five House committees.

Cheney said that the George W, Bush administration made a point of ramping up security at military bases, diplomatic outposts and other American facilities worldwide each year on September 11.

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'When we were there, on our watch, we were always ready on 9/11, on the anniversary,' he recalled. 'We always anticipated they were coming for us, especially in that part of the world.'

'I cannot understand why they weren't ready to go,' the former two-term vice president said of the Obama administration.

'You've got units in the Defense Department that are superb. They practice for this contingency. And they didn't have anybody in the area,'

Donald Rumsfeld spoke to an audience of Washington glitterati about his book, Rumsfeld's Rules: Leadership Lessons in Business, Politics, War, and Life, which will be released to the public on May 14

Buildings and cars were engulfed in flames after terrorists attacked the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, LIbya on September 11, 2012. The Obama administration is under fire for its handling of the military-style assault, which left the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans dead

President George W. Bush drew praise in 2001 from both Republicans and Democrats for his handling of the 9/11 attacks on the Pentagon and New York City's World Trade Center. Dick Cheney said the Sept. 11 anniversary was always a cause for heightened security around the world when he was vice president

The former vice president also served as Secretary of Defense during the George H.W. Bush presidency, from 1989 to 1993. He hasn't spoken
publicly about the Benghazi attack, and - like former President George
W. Bush - has largely kept his comments about the Obama administration to a
minimum since leaving government service.

In notable exceptions, he criticized the administration in 2010 for treating terror attacks against the United States as criminal acts as opposed to acts of war,' and then praised the White House a year later for successfully killing al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

His discussion with MailOnline came on the eve of a potentially explosive hearing in the House of Representatives that will include testimony from three whistle-blowers with direct knowledge of the U.S. government's actions before, during and after the Benghazi attack.

'The hearing should be damned interesting,' Cheney predicted.

Cheney chatted with former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, who was among approximately 120 guests gathered to support Donald Rumsfeld on the publication of his book

Conservative broadcaster Laura Ingraham (R) and Lynne Cheney (L), the former vice president's wife and a former chairwoman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, were among the attendees

The military-style assault on Sept. 11, 2012 claimed the lives of four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens.

With pre-set mortar rounds raining down on the consulate and rocket-propelled grenades turning the building into a fiery, smoke-filled death trap, the Obama administration reportedly knew in real-time that it was under attack by terrorists - yet did nothing to intervene.

Documents unearthed by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform establish that the State Department - then led by Hillary Clinton - refused to beef up security in Benghazi during the weeks beforehand.

And days after the consulate stood in ruins, despite CIA intelligence to the contrary, the administration stuck to its early line that described the attack as the product of a spontaneous mob upset by a low-budget YouTube video that lampooned the Muslim prophet Muhammad.

Cheney suggested that political considerations in the weeks before the 2012 presidential election drove the administration's decision-making after the Benghazi attack became global news.

Gregory N. Hicks, the deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Libya at the time of the Benghazi terrorist attacks, is among three witnesses who will tell Congress what they know during a May 8 hearing on Capitol Hill

A burnt-out interior is all that remained of the U.S. consulate building in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi two days after a terror attack whose perpetrators reportedly included militants connected to al-Qaeda and Ansar al-Sharia

President Barack Obama and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have drawn fire for the administration's actions before, during and after the Benghazi attack. Cheney suggested Tuesday that political considerations largely drove the White House's response

'I think what dominated the way they
were thinking about this thing is - they wanted to be able to say, "We
got bin Laden. Problem solved",' Cheney told MailOnline.

'And it was shortly before the election,
and you know: a big crisis with al-Qaeda attacking embassies? They were
hoping that they could avoid that. It was a bit of a reach.'

He added that the Bush administration would have handled things differently, even if they had been caught unprepared.

He also called the House Republicans' interim report, issued last month, 'a terrible indictment of how fouled up we were.'

'Everybody ought to read it,' he said.

Vice President Joe Biden (L) consoled Ambassador Chris Stevens' mother during a May 3 State Department ceremony for foreign service officers who died in the line of service. UN Ambassador Susan Rice (R) claimed days after the Benghazi attack that a spontaneous protest was behind the attack on the Benghazi consulate